WHY PHOTOGRAPHY OUTSIDE YOUR COMFORT ZONE IS IMPORTANT 'PLAY' TIME

I'm not a sports photographer but I do find myself in 'action' event situations. I'm not a professional mountain biker but I do find myself in weekend situations with two little boys and a husband who are keen riders. So when the opportunity came up to attend a Nikon x Jay French trackside low-light photography masterclass I jumped at it. It's not often you get the chance to practice in these settings without the pressure of delivering a client brief!

SONY a1, Tamron 28-75mm, ISO 200, f/11, Shutter 1/20

SONY a1, Tamron 28-75mm, ISO 160, f/10, Shutter 1/20

SONY a1, Tamron 28-75mm, ISO 160, f/20, Shutter 1/10

PRACTICING PAN SHOTS

Intentional camera movement while paning with a moving subject is kinda hard! It's not often you're gifted a subject who's preparing to cycle around and around a track so that you can practice this technique. It involves finding the sweet spot with your shutter speed slowed down for background blur yet fast enough to freeze enough detail on your moving subject. You'll see from my images below that I was playing with shutter speed between 1/10 to 1/20 to achieve this. And working with a high f stop to help with the focus and not blowing out the highlights from having the shutter open for 'long' time.

FLASH IN THE FOREST

Jay French is a commercial photographer who specialises in outdoor and action photography. He often finds himself in forests with low light needing to capture the action for riders. He will carry in strobe lights to setup and fire off beside the track. So this was great to practice with - we were using a one or two Godox a600pro portable lights - to see what we could capture with different setting as the riders practiced over and over.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND MAKING CONNECTIONS


The great thing about NZIPP's annual conference is the opportunity to do events and masterclasses with professional photographers working at the top of their game. Seeing and learning from Jay French was awesome. And I got to make new connections with other photographers working around the country.

Shout out to my new mate Kirsten Summers that I met at the masterclass who also happens to be an event and portrait photographer too. She comes from a MTB family so is often found on the tracks photographing riders. Thanks for the photo babe!

It's me! With my Sony camera, photographed by Kirsten Summers.